Stepping into spring

A cornucopia of choreography

by Johnette Rodriguez

It seems that everyone's dance card will fill up this month, with multiple opportunities to see local companies in performance. In the next two weeks, Cadence Dance Project, Festival Ballet, and Island Moving Co. will bring forth new works to Rhode Island audiences, offer fresh interpretations of repertory pieces, and dance in new venues.

First in line is a full and varied program from Festival Ballet this weekend (March 10 and 11 at the VMA Arts & CulturalCenter, 331-2211). Celebrate Dance! will feature four Rhode Island premieres -- two from ballet's classical period, Paquita and Les Sylphides, and two from artistic director Mihailo Djuric's original contemporary works, Loose Ends and Extremes.

Extremes is set to the music of 18-time MacDowell colonist Barbara Kolb, with whom Djuric worked when he was in New Hampshire. From the feeling of such contrasts in the voices of the cello and the flute and from Kolb's use of the extreme ends of the ranges of those instruments, Djuric created a pas de deux, thinking of the opposite extremes of gender in male and female.

"The dancing is very angular, very sharp," Djuric noted. "I'm pushing each of the dancers to the maximum with legs and lines, stretching them to extremes."

Guest artist Sascha Radetsky, a member of the American Ballet Theatre and fresh from a starring role as Charlie in Center Stage, joins Festival Ballet principal dancer Eunice Kim to dance Extremes. And Djuric finds him to be "a dancer who will push himself to the extreme."

The other contemporary piece, Loose Ends, is an ensemble work in three movements, with an expressive pas de deux in the middle movement. As its title suggests, this work, set to the music of Tomaso Albinoni, looks at modern relationships and all their quirks.

The two classical pieces, which frame Festival's program, opening with the romantic and melancholy Les Sylphides, based on the music of Chopin, and closing with the fireworks of Paquita, with music by Ludwig Minkus. The latter was first presented in 1846, and the only fragments of Marius Petipa's original choreography that have come down to us are in a pas de trois and a grand pas de deux. Former Bolshoi dancer Larissa Saveliev and Djuric have set this piece on the Festival dancers, with her husband, guest artist Gennadi Saveliev, a soloist from the American Ballet Theatre, performing with Eunice Kim.

Saveliev will also be a guest artist, paired with Jennifer Ricci, in Les Sylphides, a ballet created by Michel Fokine in 1909 for the first Ballet Russes season in Paris, with fabled dancers Pavlova and Nijinsky in its cast. Djuric has staged this production twice before, though not with Festival Ballet.

"I do find it hard to go back and forth between the classical and contemporary in rehearsal," Djuric admitted. "Each of the pieces has its own style and each is so different, requiring different energy. You have to start with a different feeling from which you dance it and it leaves a different taste in your mouth when you watch it."

"In the contemporary pieces," he continued, "everything is soft and rounded, more relaxed. In the classical, everything is lifted and pulled up. The human being is not a computer to turn this off and on. I just have to be aware of that."

On March 15, Cadence Dance Project will present the Fleet Arts Showcase for 2000 middle school students in the morning at the Providence Performing Arts Center, and a Women's History Month presentation at Brown University that evening (863-2189). Cadence dancers will present four pieces, set to music that ranges from Tchaikovsky to Ani DiFranco and all choreographed by artistic director Colleen Cavanaugh.

Anything But Suite is a group of contemporary ballets, set to the edgy folk-pop songs of DiFranco, including a solo to "Little Plastic Castle" and a duet to Glass House. These pieces are quite mesmerizing to watch. As is Dawn of Departure, in a completely different way. Tchaikovsky's lyricism underpins the push-pull of a relationship in this lovely duet.

The two other works for the Brown program grew out of Cavanaugh's experience as a practicing obstetrician-gynecologist. Unfinished Ballad, a collaboration among dance, music and sculpture, explores the loss of sensuality that a woman can endure when faced with breast cancer, as well as the rediscovery of her true identify. Set to four lieder by Johannes Brahms, it will be danced by Leticia Guerrero and Alejandro Gomez.

Fallen House is a compelling and moving look at the intricately knotted patterns of domestic violence and will be performed by Donald Acevedo and Marissa Soltis. Set to Bohuslav Martinu's Concerto for String Quartet and Orchestra, this ballet was selected for presentation at New York City's Ballet Builders.

"This piece shows where the relationship begins, with love and tenderness," Cavanaugh noted, "and then it progresses to a point where he's seeking control and she's losing control and he begins to hurt her. She leaves out of fear, steps back out of guilt, and then they re-enter the relationship, she out of her insecurity and self-doubt as well as her love."

Cavanaugh thrives on making pieces that deal so directly with women's lives. She believes Fallen Ballad brings up issues in a non-verbal way that everyone, especially young people, find very hard to talk about. Therefore, she has organized discussions to follow both the PPAC performance for middle schoolers and the performance at Brown.

Also on March 15, Island Moving Co. will be showcased by the Preservation Society of Newport, as part of the Elms' centennial year celebration (847-1000, ext. 140). Island's dancers will do sections of their repertory tango piece, Hora Cera, and they will preview choreographer Miki Ohlsen's new work, based on the music of Cole Porter. The Porter dances will be accompanied by slides of historic Newport and photos of well-known Newport couples; the Mac Chrupcala Orchestra will provide the music.

"I chose Cole Porter from this hundred-year span because there are some rumors that he might have written some songs in Newport," artistic director Ohlsen explained, "and because he seems to represent the glamor and decadence of that golden era of the mansions."

The Cole Porter numbers, which will become part of a longer piece called Deconstructing Cole Porter (to be presented in Island's summer concert at Fort Adams and in a longer performance this fall at the Elms), will kick off the company's Spring Forward concert at Rhode Island College on March 17 (847-4470). Pianist Ron Sanfilippo will provide the live music for the four Porter songs: "Night and Day," "Just One of Those Things," "Every Time We Say Goodbye," and "Why Can't You Behave?"

"I'm loving doing this," Ohlsen stressed. "I can remember my father singing Everytime We Say Goodbye to me. But this time I want it to be a contemporary ballad. I didn't want it be just a swirling dance. The costumes have been minimalized to get at the feeling of each of those songs."

Also on the Spring Forward program will be apples to oranges, a modern solo performed by Michael Bolger and choreographed by Carol Somers, plus Date To Be Determined (Ohlsen, 1991) and Under a Sheltered Sky (2000). The latter explores Ohlsen's fascination with praying mantises, with antenna-like hand gestures and quirky, en pointe feet movements. Sky opens with a captivating trio of dancers folding and unfolding their bodies over each other, and it contains a pas de deux of mating mantises, with flips and catches between the partners that are breathtaking to behold.

Date To Be Determined is performed with five dancers in four movements. It was inspired by Ohlsen losing two family members as well as friends in quick succession to AIDS.

"It has to do with my feelings about death and how one should be treated in dying," she reflected, "and also the recovery of the living afterwards."

So, with choreography and music spanning the last 150 years, and with topics ranging from romantic love to domestic abuse, from breast cancer to AIDS, dance in Rhode Island is roaring into March. Catch it while you can!